Comelec chief: Don’t sleep, more votes to come in Monday night

Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista cited a story purportedly from the Bible and asked the people to stay awake as the nation awaits the votes to be transmitted Monday night.

“No specific time. But do you remember about the waiting for the bride and the groom to come? They were waiting and waiting. Then one said, ‘I’ll sleep first,’ then another said, ‘I’m going to go first and eat.’ And then when they came back, all of a sudden, nakasarado na ang pinto. Nakapasok na pala yung bride. So, don’t sleep,” he said.

Commission on Elections (COMELEC) head Andres Bautista said that the votes from more than 92,509 precincts nationwide are expected to be transmitted a few hours after the polling precincts closed.

However, Bautista did not have a specific answer when asked for a “target time” for the full release of the number of votes from both the national and local elections.

As of this writing, the mirror servers from the Comelec have shown votes were already transmitted from 55 percent of precincts nationwide with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte leading the presidential race with over 5 million votes, and Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos narrowly leading the vice presidential race over closest rival, Leni Robredo, with only less than a million votes.

The Comelec has earlier said that it is expecting a 75 percent to 80 percent voter turnout from the toal of 54,363,844 registered voters for this year’s polls.

Chairman Bautista also expressed that Monday’s elections in general “went smoothly.”

"Overall, we believe that the elections went smoothly," he said in a press conference at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.

Bautista said that despite the delays due to some problems brought about by malfunctioning vote counting machines (VCM), the Comelec was able to address most of the issues.

He also said that the number of problematic VCMs went down compared to the last elections in 2013.

Based on the figures presented by COMELEC, only 150 machines out of 92,509 clustered precincts had to be replaced this year as against 171 (out of 77,829 precincts) in 2013 and 205 (out of 76,347 precinct) in 2010.

The Comelec had extended by an hour voting in clustered precincts where voting started 9 a.m. or later due to malfunctioning VCMs.